


Magic, Madness, Heaven, Sin

by volti



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Boston, F/M, Femme Fatale, M/M, Mafia AU, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If you’re reading this, it means I’m not back yet. But don’t worry about me, Jean. I’ll be okay. Don’t worry. Don’t come looking for me. And whatever you do, don’t call the coppers.</i>
</p>
<p>The year is 1924, and editor-in-chief Marco Bodt has gone missing, last seen at a speakeasy in the heart of Boston. When Jean takes it upon himself to investigate, his search finds him at the door of Mikasa Ackerman—the sweet-talking lounge singer at the speakeasy by night, and cold-hearted boss of the formidable Ackerman Family by day. But help from the Family comes at a cost, and the more time Jean spends with crime and the city, the more secrets he keeps from his family and friends at home, and the more he starts to think that Marco was never exactly who Jean thought he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING //CLENCHES FIST
> 
> I also have an aesthetic playlist [here](http://8tracks.com/ondaquil/attaboy) if you'd like to listen!

 

 

_If you’re reading this, it means I’m not back yet. But don’t worry about me, Jean. I’ll be okay. Don’t worry. Don’t come looking for me. And whatever you do, don’t call the coppers._

That was all Marco wrote, aside from his name and an I love you that Jean knew all too well. Even if, somehow, it felt like it had been written ages ago.

In hindsight Jean should have known, before he found the note on the kitchen table, that Marco had never come home last night. When he first woke up, the bed was empty, felt empty, unused. It was like that sometimes, because Marco was always the first to leave his apartment and the last to turn in, even when Jean took the bus down from Lexington for the weekend. Jean liked to joke, sometimes, that Marco was always thirsty for something. Adventure. Justice. The perfect story. He didn’t know what it was exactly, just that Marco had always wanted that ever since they were kids.

And he got it, with that newspaper of his. _The Boston Advocate._ The whole reason he’d been out all night in the first place. That was what Marco told him before he’d left. “A story, I’ve got a real story on my hands, Jean, but I can’t tell you what it is.”

“You can’t tell me,” Jean had said with a grin, “but everyone will be able to read it by the end of the week?”

He hated that the last thing he’d seen was a frown, instead of a smile; he loved that the last thing he’d felt was a kiss, quick and reeking of _see you soon,_ accompanied by a simple, “Just trust me on this.”

And now he was wondering when Marco had the time to leave the note on the table in the first place. How he’d missed it in the time he’d spent with the living room carpet under his bare feet as he flipped through the books he’d brought, and an issue of _The Advocate_ he’d found lying haphazardly on Marco’s coffee table. There were a few of them always strewn about the apartment, along with a copy of the first issue, dated _31 March 1922,_ which Marco had framed and hung up on the living room wall. It was like a second office here sometimes, like neither of them could really get away from their work, with the polished wooden shelves, palm-sized notepads with dog-eared edges, and a radio that seemed to collect dust every time Jean came to visit, no matter how often he cleaned it. 

And the note. It still went back to the note.

How many of them had Marco written before? How many nights had he come home too late? Maybe it was more common than Jean thought; there were times when he’d woken up in the middle of the night and rolled over to find Marco just climbing into bed, but he tended to chalk it up to a long night investigating, setting type, running copies. It had to be harder, with such a short-staffed establishment—himself and two or three others, Marco had told him. Maybe it was just enough staff for just enough copies for just enough readers, Jean included. He still made sure that he got a copy every day, insisted on paying for the subscription himself and sometimes slipped a few extra pennies on Marco’s nightstand table before he left.

Normally Jean would have spent the morning riffling through the day’s _Advocate,_ or sometimes the _Globe_ ; now, with only a small breakfast to accompany him, he pored over the note until the letters swam together, until he was sure that his eyes were starting to cross. It had been neatly folded and pristine when he first found it; now it was wrinkled and dotted with coffee stains, and threaten to tear in the middle.

_Trust me on this,_ Marco had said, but how easily could he trust a note that told him not to call the police? They were supposed to be here to help with these sorts of things. Finding missing people. Although maybe they couldn’t be trusted to a degree, what with the police strike that had broken out back in 1919, just before winter. (Jean remembered reading about that in _The Advocate_ , too, article after article in the days during and after, with words from the officers and Police Commissioner alike.) Still, they had to have changed by now. At least one department had to be worth reaching out to.

Jean downed the rest of his coffee, picked up the note again, put it down again, shut his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was too quiet here to think about doing the right thing; it was too quiet here to think about doing anything, except feeling the panic crawl under his skin. It couldn’t be this easy, just accepting that Marco would come back “eventually,” if at all. He could do something. He could do anything.

_Don’t call the coppers._

He wouldn’t.

Instead, he shuffled into the living room and picked up the phone, rotated the old dial until he heard his mother’s voice crackle through the phone.

“Hey, mama,” he said, slipping a pocket knife into his waistcoat. “I think I need to stay in the city another day or two.”

\---

The first place he made for was _The Advocate_ ’s office. Of course Marco would be there—should be there—if he hadn’t come home. It wasn’t unlike him to spend countless hours at work, consolidating this report or editing that article. Because the country didn’t sleep with both eyes shut, so how could he?

The office was tucked away in a building on Huntington Avenue, close to the Christian Science Church. Jean had never been one for Christianity, and Marco had only sort of renounced the rigid lines of Catholicism a few years back, but the office space was cheap, and just the right distance from home. Close enough that Marco could get to his reports at a moment’s notice, but far enough that his job wouldn’t claim him for days at a time. There was a courtyard just outside the church building, and Jean could barely register the rustle of grass and the scuff of cobblestone under his shoes as he walked. It was amazing he had the time for it at all.

He’d been to the office plenty of times before, but couldn’t recall ever being there for more than ten minutes at a time—usually to pick Marco up (or pull him away) from work, or because Marco had forgotten something like his notes or an article he was meant to proofread. (Jean could never really blame him for being so frazzled—his mother was the same way about the farm back home, and they were always short-staffed there, too.) So when he neared the frosted glass door, he resolved to allow himself the luxury of looking around, even while hanging by the front door. He’d have to, anyway—there had to be _some_ kind of clue here. There was no way Marco hadn’t stopped by.

The main hub of the office was on the left, Jean remembered—the door across the short hallway was where they kept the letterpress machine, and they only used that at night, once the newspaper was completely ready to be typeset and printed. For a brief moment, he found it funny how much of the process he knew by association; he could probably rattle off the history of printing as easily as he could tell anyone how to tell ripe from rotten. But the tremble in his hand, the thought of what would or wouldn’t be on the other side of the door, brought him back to himself. No more distractions. No more frivolity. Not until Marco was home again. Or at least, not until Jean knew where he was.

He gripped the doorknob, perhaps a little too lightly. Turned. Pushed it open.

He wasn’t sure if he should have been relieved or unsettled by the usual organized clutter of the office. Stacks of books in every corner, besides broad wooden desks that reeked of fresh polish. Dull typewriters, a window that practically begged to be opened, and a spread of creased and wrinkled papers over the desk he knew to be Marco’s. Just an office, to be sure, but an office that was eerily empty.

And unlocked.

There had to be someone here, then. It wouldn’t have been unlocked otherwise.

Jean almost slumped against the door in relief, at the thought that Marco might be here after all, but it opened behind him, and he stumbled back onto his feet.

“I was wondering where you…” he began, turning on his heel, but stopped himself once he was face-to-face with two men he could have sworn he’d never met before. One, burly and blond, was still gripping the doorknob; the other, tan and lanky with a shock of black hair, straightened and folded his arms almost immediately.

The blond man smiled; it looked almost forced. “Something we can help you with, sir?”

Jean frowned and didn’t move. “Who are you?” he asked through his teeth. Bold, he knew, in front of someone who could probably easily send him flying out the window, but who else would defend this place tooth and nail? “And how did you get in here?”

The blond man chuckled and slid past him, jangling a ring of keys hanging from his fingers as he unlocked a file cabinet and rummaged through some papers. “Name’s Reiner Braun,” he replied, his voice strangely benevolent and gruff at the same time. “Bertholdt Fubar behind you. Come in Bert. And by the way,” he added, halfway through a folder, “Where I come from, people tell each other ‘Good morning.’ Especially someone who looks as upstanding as you.” He nodded toward another file cabinet and tossed the keyring toward Bertholdt as he stepped inside.

“Where _I_ come from,” Jean retorted with clenched fists, “people don’t barge into other people’s place of business.”

Reiner’s face faltered—barely, but Jean noticed. “You? But you’re not—”

“ _Reiner._ ” Bertholdt finally spoke from the opposite corner of the office, and Reiner fell silent. “Now,” Bertholdt went on, turning to Jean with a packet in his hands, “could you tell us who _you_ are and what you need?”

Jean bristled, then gave them his first name; that was all they needed. “I’m looking for Marco Bodt, the editor-in-chief. He’s…” He paused. “A friend of mine. He should have been here earlier.” His fists loosened, but only slightly. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

Reiner and Bertholdt stopped their work and shared a look, one Jean thought shouldn’t have lasted so long; Reiner shrugged, and Bertholdt shook his head, and they turned back to him.

“Haven’t seen him,” Reiner replied, at the same time that Bertholdt said, “Inventory.” Jean wasn’t sure which to address first.

Bertholdt chose for him. “We haven’t seen him come in this morning,” he offered, “but yesterday he told us to work on inventory and tidy up in case he came in late today. Paper, ink, checking if the letters are wearing down.”

“We’ll keep an eye out for him,” Reiner added; he’d moved onto the bottle of ink by now, counting them out and holding each one to the window, probably to check the level in the sunlight. “No window in the press room,” he explained, prodding the bottle in his hand with a sheepish grin.

Jean didn’t have the patience to say he already knew that.

So Marco wasn’t here after all. Never had been. He’d even set up plans “just in case.” In case he showed up late? Or not at all? Ever? In what universe was that meant to make Jean feel better? “Look,” he started; his voice was low, and quavered when he didn’t want it to. “I have to find him. And I don’t know if I can leave the place in your hands, key or no key. Never seen you collecting reports, or setting up press. Never even heard of you before now.” His eyes narrowed, and his heart picked up in his chest—so-called reporters couldn’t hear things like that, could they? “How do I know you didn’t do something to him and take his keys, because if you did, I swear—”

But Reiner was already fishing something out of his pocket—a folded piece of paper that he pinched between thumb and forefinger. Worn like Jean’s. Dog-eared like Jean’s. Reiner pressed it into his open palm and said, “He entrusted this to us, fella. We wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want us to be here. Bigger fish to fry, see?”

Jean might have asked what kind of fish Reiner had in mind if he weren’t so intently staring at the now unfolded note. _Reiner and Bertholdt,_ it was addressed—he didn’t need to make sense of the words to recognize Marco’s spindly penmanship. Less reason _not_ to trust them, maybe, but he clenched his fist all the same. The knife was still in his pocket if he really needed it. “Been working here long?” he asked, jaw squared.

“Half a year, part-time,” Reiner answered, all but snatching the note back and stuffing it away. “He needed printers, not reporters. Said he had that covered.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Enter us.”

“Weekdays,” Bertholdt added, offhand, and the logic clicked in Jean’s head.

Jean opted to survey the room anyway, in spite of Reiner’s reassurances, in spite of the note. Gut reactions were always something to go on. They’d gotten him through enough mishaps at the farm—failed crops, unexpected calving, the one temperamental chicken that never allowed him to take any of its eggs in the morning. Reiner and Bertholdt weren’t farm animals, to be sure, but being a person of the earth had its merits in the office, too. He thought so, at least.

He rummaged through desk drawers and bookshelves and flipped through papers, careful not to tip over any bottle of ink or upset any piles the other two men had made. A glance at the papers in Reiner’s hands showed little more than supplies and corresponding numbers—true to their word, or at least to their act—but there was nothing else out of place. No other notes from Marco, nothing from the other staff. Anything with a date on it was from two days prior or earlier. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, loud enough for Reiner to hear and cock his head.

“I’ll keep you posted,” Reiner offered again, and Jean nodded and turned on his heel. Tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that. Maybe this was how his mother felt whenever he spent too long in town with Sasha and Connie—and Marco, before he’d left. Maybe Marco would come back and find him biting his nails, and praying, maybe. In any other situation he might have laughed, because they were still like this even when they were their own men. Still came with _where-were-you_ s and _you could have been robbed, or killed_ and asking strange men about loved ones.

Tomorrow. And the next days, and the day after that. Until he got an answer. Or a body, maybe. Jean swallowed hard and tried not to think about it.

Bertholdt caught up with him just as he made it to the church courtyard. Shifted from foot to foot and said he might know something. “Reiner didn’t know,” he added quickly, before Jean could grab him by the front of his shirt. “I didn’t want to make a scene, understand?

“ _Listen,_ ” he hissed when Jean spoke over him, half a mess of _then where is he_. “I don’t know where he is exactly. But he mentioned… going somewhere last night. A joint.”

“A what?”

“A _speakeasy._ ” Bertholdt’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “You know what those are, don’t you?”

Of course Jean did. Sometimes he read about them broken into and busted in nights prior. Whoever had the business of selling alcohol almost under the police’s noses, in this day and age, had to be either extremely clever, or extremely foolish. He’d never dare. Wouldn’t even dream of it.

“Cambridge Street,” Bertholdt told him, voice still hushed, holding the cuff of Jean’s sleeve as if entrusting him with his life fortune. “Building with a red railing, see? They call it Scarlett’s. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Marco said he wanted to do some investigating there. See what it’s like.”

“He’s gonna write about it?” 

“Probably won’t publish it, if he does. Putting a business in danger like that, that’s not what Marco’s about.”

“Justice,” Jean cut in through tight lips. “Justice is what Marco’s about.” 

“Don’t I know it. A few months working with him, how could you not?” Bertholdt’s face didn’t change. “So what happens when justice is compromised? What do you do?”

Jean narrowed his eyes; tugging his arm back only made Bertholdt hold on more tightly. “Why doesn’t Reiner know about this?”

“Because Marco didn’t tell him—told me not to tell him, too. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he thought I would be better suited to handle things.”

Jean shifted from one foot to the other, still tense. “Don’t you need a password for those places?” It was a feeble attempt at taking the talk back to what he needed, but it was something.

“Naturally,” said Bertholdt, and finally let go of his sleeve, leaving him to the July heat and the quiet, almost unsettling ripple of the grass in the wind.

\---

If Marco wanted to have a stiff drink, all he had to do was say so. Jean wouldn’t have gone with him, of course. And Marco would have understood, of course. But why the secrecy?

Jean mulled it over in an old restaurant downtown, over a plate of corned beef and cabbage. It wasn’t much, but it was better than trying to scrape together whatever was left in the apartment’s refrigerator. And maybe it was worth it to see the look of relief on the waitress’s face when he _didn’t_ order a platter of baked beans, or the tight-lipped smile she gave him when she came to refill his cup of coffee. At least it was company, even if they never exchanged more than hushed pleasantries. She asked him, perhaps in an attempt to take him away from whatever might be on his mind, if he knew that this place used to be a warehouse, a dining room for sailors when they came in from the harbor.

He didn’t, and she clicked her tongue and cocked her hip with the coffee pot in her hand. “Shows how much you know about your own city, boy,” she said. Jean wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh, but for a moment he found himself wondering what sailors had sat here, what they had thought about, if they were anything like him.

He couldn’t put it together, wasn’t satisfied with letting it be. There had to be a logic to it. Maybe Marco had thought he’d go to the police about it, try to get the place raided and shut down. And he might have. He’d give Marco that. What he wouldn’t give was why Marco _wouldn’t._ Marco had always talked about “the right thing” growing up, how he’d always read about lights under baskets, or something like that—Jean didn’t know the particulars. It was more like him to fall slack and look for the light in Marco’s eyes, instead of under those baskets he kept talking about.

And then Marco would grin, and tell him to be serious, there were people out there who needed these stories. Who needed to be heard. And if he was the only one willing to take that on, then he would.

Maybe nobody needed to be heard at the speakeasy—maybe there wouldn’t be a story about it after all, and he was overthinking. He probably needed to allow himself that, the thought that things happened on a whim, things happened that he couldn’t understand completely. His mother used to tell him that, sometimes with a prayer book in her hand. She’d stopped recently, as though she thought he’d heard it enough; he’d certainly grumbled about it under his breath. But he could use the reminder now, probably more than ever.

Jean thought until his temples hurt, until the wood panels blurred together and the rest of his beef went cold, and the waitress joked about how she could have sworn he was a sailor himself, what with the knot in his brow. This time, to humor her, he laughed.

He’d go to Scarlett’s, then. There wasn’t anywhere else he _could_ go.

He spent the rest of the afternoon wandering. Popped into a bookstore and overheard upcoming plans about a hundred-year-anniversary event. Felt the rumble of the subway trains under the bricks and cobblestones, and the screech of tires in the pit of his stomach. Meandered through the common grounds and stumbled across a nearby publishing house. They’d found it once before, weekends ago—Marco had pursed his lips and said that books were always published too late, that he needed something in real time, but that he admired it all the same.

“They’re putting forth the same things as you, aren’t they?” Jean had asked, with one eyebrow raised. Marco had nodded, and Jean remembered how his chest swelled with pride in his waistcoat.

Maybe the bookstore had some of this place’s works in stock. Jean would have to check sometime, when he had the sense to. When he wasn’t thinking about alcohol and crumpled notes and not calling the police.

Once night fell and the streets were lit, he made his way toward Cambridge Street, just as Bertholdt had told him, and stopped in for a meal on the way. He wasn’t planning to drink, but he wouldn’t go in on an empty stomach, either. At least it would give him a clearer head. 

His mother had mentioned taking him here as a child. To visit family, she said—“Lots of us in the tenements.” Whatever memories of family he had came to him in flashes, but he couldn’t feel any of it here. Only the stiffness of all-brick buildings, and the thought that people might be peering at him through their curtains and shutters. And the bright red railing that caught his eye under the glow of the streetlights.

If he hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have suspected it to be a speakeasy at all. Perhaps a museum, or a restaurant. And that was if he’d noticed it at all. There were no signs, no outside lights, nothing but the nondescript brick exterior that so seamlessly blended in with the surrounding building, and the stone steps that led down from the sidewalk to what looked like a dark wooden door. Not as foolish as he might have thought before.

A look to the left, to the right, and then Jean was down the stairs and giving the door three sharp knocks. He hadn’t noticed the small door from a distance, or the thick iron grilles that covered it, but it opened after a moment, and a pair of beady eyes met his own.

“You got the password, fella?” the man behind the door asked. Jean couldn’t make out much beyond the tufts of curly hair that fell onto the man’s forehead, and he stepped back and swallowed.

“Naturally,” Jean tried—because it was worth a shot, and it was the only thing Bertholdt had said.

The small door shut, a couple of locks clicked, and the door creaked open. The man was still standing there, with his hand on the knob and a lazy grin on his lips. “Evening,” he said, clapping Jean on the back as he stumbled inside. “Enjoy yourself, won’tcha? You look like you need some loosening up.”

Even as the man stepped forward and blended back into the crowd of patrons, Jean hung by the back wall. What the hell kind of place was this, that it could be so different from what was going on just outside, so free of whatever pressure he might have felt upon coming in? It was like a hideout here, almost—well-lit and furnished with a few tables in the open. High chairs lined a polished bar, and behind a bartender cleaning glasses were several shelves on which bottles of relatively equal size sat. Jean couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose.

At the front was a stage—not particularly outstanding, nothing more than a raised platform with more than the usual lights and a beaded curtain, where an ensemble was playing slow jazz. Cabaret-style, Sasha would have said if she were here (and she probably would have jumped at the opportunity, now that Jean thought about it). Most of the players lined the back wall—a trumpeter, a bass player, a drummer, a saxophonist—but at the front was a man at a dark piano, and beside him, a woman with a flower in her dark hair and a wine-colored dress that fanned out at the floor. Pale, slender fingers wrapped around the microphone in front of her, almost caressing it, and a smile danced on her lips as she sang, tossing glances toward the man at the piano in between the occasional grand gestures she made with her arms.

Jean’s mouth went dry. He almost hoped she would look his way—that for one simple second, he were here for something better. For the shiver that her singing, low and sweet, left in his bones. 

Of course he recognized the song. How could he not? He’d heard it countless times before, old and scratchy from the speaker of the gramophone Marco had inherited from his father. He’d bumped into the living room couch and the coffee table too many times, insisting to Marco that he couldn’t dance, that dancing was for slick folks, the kind who never had dirt under their fingernails. And Marco always grinned and convinced him to take his hands anyway, he didn’t care about the dirt. Because they had the space to themselves to be themselves, he said.

He called it their song, and Jean thought it made sense, because somehow his heart always slowed to match the beat in spite of his own steps. Or the way Marco hummed to keep time long after the record had stopped. It slowed even now, when the sound wasn’t old, when it wasn’t scratchy, when it wasn’t Marco. 

It almost felt sinful, hearing it here, feeling like this here.

Jean swallowed, hard, and squeezed his way to the bar, sliding into a high chair and tearing his eyes from the stage. His fingers drummed an aimless rhythm against the wood, and a polished glass slid to a stop in front of him.

“Name’s Thomas. What can I get for you?” The bartender was talking to him now, a slender man with cropped blond hair, and Jean snapped to attention.

“Got a soda?” he managed, too flooded with the weightlessness of the place to think of little other than what he came for. “I’m not really a drinking man.”

Thomas laughed under his breath to the gentle fade of the singer’s voice and the whoops and applause of the other patrons. “Not a drinking man?” he repeated. “Then what the hell are you doing in a place like this?”

Jean managed an uncomfortable laugh, amid the pluck of a new bass line, an. “Looking for someone. I heard he was here last night. D’you know who I could talk to about something like that?”

“The owner of this place, I’d imagine.” Thomas leaned forward on his elbows and nodded his head toward the stage. “The canary there. Miss Mikasa Ackerman. You’d have to talk to her. Tell you not to be fooled by all that smiling, though. ”The glass in his hand squeaked, as if to prove a point. “Miss Mikasa Ackerman, that’s not the kind of person you cross every day. Or ever, if you want your fortune intact.”

Jean had heard the surname before, but he couldn’t remember where or why. Something inside him desperately tried to recall it—like he really needed it, like the rest of him depended on it—and came up with nothing. 

Still, he followed Thomas’s gaze, to the woman with the dark, dark hair and the dark, dark dress. She was sitting beside the pianist now, half-disinterested, half-adoring—like he was a family member, not a lover. (He looked too old to be a lover besides.) She was probably humming along as he played, and when she tucked her hair back, Jean noticed the shimmer of what looked like a pearl dangling from her ear. He’d never seen a pearl in real life before.

Miss Mikasa Ackerman. Charming. Jean took a sip and committed her to memory.

She turned to look toward the bar then, caught his look along the way. In the light, and closer to the stage, it was easier to see the hard, glittering grey of her eyes instead of the black he’d thought before. Jean didn’t look away; he pressed his lips into a firm line instead, and his fists followed suit. Maybe he didn’t need to hope for something better if the answer to everything was sitting right in front of him.

As if knowing what he wanted, she rose, gathering the side of her dress to keep from tripping as she descended the side staircase. “What are you giving our poor clientele, Thomas?” she asked, leaning over the bar. Even when she spoke she sounded like metal, like steel instead of the gold that spilled from her lips under the spotlight. “You know we’ve got better than that sour stuff you call moonshine.”

Jean glanced toward Thomas again, shared a look with him. Thomas cocked a brow in return, as if to say _I told you so,_ and turned to Mikasa with a grin. “You know I’ll only give that out to family now. Mine _and_ yours.”

Mikasa’s face just barely faltered, as if trying to conceal the wrinkle in her nose. She reached over for an empty glass, and the way she traced her finger along the rim called Jean’s eyes to the glitter of the jewels around her wrist. “And you know we all do appreciate it.”

Thomas nodded toward Jean, who stiffened and sat up straight. “This fella here says he’d like to talk to you. One of your adoring fans, I’m sure.”

She turned, as if she had only noticed Jean sitting beside her—up this close, he might be able to see any cracks in whatever persona she carried, if he looked hard enough. But there was nothing he could find. Nothing in her makeup, nothing in her dress, nothing in the curve of her back as she continued to lean, or in the drape of her hair over her cheeks. Everything was practiced, uncannily so.

“I—” Jean cleared his throat, as if snapping back to himself. “I’d like to ask you some questions, Mika—Miss Ackerman.” His mother had taught him better than that, staring too long and jumping to first names. 

She raised an eyebrow. “That's a bit presumptuous of you, isn't it, Mr….?”

“Kirschtein.” Jean squared his jaw. “It’s nothing that’ll put this place in danger. I’ll leave when I have what I need.”

This time, Mikasa’s face didn’t falter. She smiled, red lips, straight teeth, and put down the empty glass with a hollow _thud._ “Naturally,” she replied, and Jean didn’t know to what. “Why don’t you come to my office, then, Mr. Kirschtein?”

“Of course,” Jean said—because it might have been too stupid to echo her “naturally,” and gave his waistcoat two taps before he followed her behind the stage.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, so sorry for taking so long to update! I got sucked into other fandom so in the meantime, but I'm still very much committed to this fic. It's a baby. 
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoy the next installment! Comments and kudos are always welcome <3

Things were supposed to look as big on the inside as they did on the outside. Like they made sense. The farmhouse looked like that. The barn looked like that. Everything was the right size, in the right place. Jean could almost picture home in his head–the wood paneling, the rug under his socks, the cows sent to pasture, the quiet of it all. Except for his mother’s voice, at once scolding and loving. He wouldn’t tell her he missed that, not now—he wouldn’t know what kind of reaction to expect.

But the speakeasy didn’t make sense to him. Beyond the stage, behind the beaded curtain, was a hallway, at the end of which was a large wooden door, heavy-looking. Jean tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness, listened for the click of Mikasa’s heels to guide him, fixed his gaze to the floor to keep from stepping on the hem of her dress. His steps sounded hollow, like maybe death was behind that door. Even if it were, she’d still have to wrangle it from his grasp.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Kirschtein.” Mikasa finally spoke with all her airs, the way Jean expected ladies and gentlemen and others to talk. The way his mother expected him to talk to strangers—like they were rich enough to talk that way. Like they didn’t have to get by on language the way they got by on money. His head snapped upward, square between the ridges of her shoulder blades. “I don’t like to do any sort of business in these formal outfits. They’re for the stage, after all. Would you give me a moment to change?”

He did, with a single nod and a jaw as hardened as his resolve, and he caught a sliver of light beyond the door before Mikasa closed it behind her. He stood toe-to-toe with the doorway, each beat of his heart louder than the last, and he might have counted the seconds if he had a watch. He didn’t strain to listen for the ruffle of clothing—he probably wouldn’t have heard it anyway. 

Not the type of person you cross every day, Thomas had said. He was right about that, even if Jean couldn’t necessarily speak of fortunes. The knife felt as heavy in his pocket as his feet felt against the floor, and he tapped the outline of it through the fabric to brace himself. Or ever, if you want your fortune intact.

With a hell of a business like this, Jean couldn’t blame Thomas for saying that.

Just as he reached for the doorknob, still warm from Mikasa’s grip, the lock clicked. He recoiled, and the door opened to reveal Mikasa, changed into a comfortable salt-and-pepper business suit. He couldn’t recall having seen many women in pants before—even his mother and Sasha worked in skirts and aprons when they got to work in the fields or behind the counter of the butcher shop. They were about as rare to him as the pearls still in her ears and the jewels around her wrist. But her eyes held him, hard and dark, as she took a step backward, challenging rather than inviting.

“Please,” Mikasa said, piercing, a little more steel than sugar. “Do come in.”

Jean gathered himself—appraised her from head to toe—and stepped inside.

Already he could sense the cold, hard difference in the atmosphere. The rigidness of the polished wooden desk, the sleek faces and edges of glass in the cabinets Mikasa was listlessly looking through, even the creak of the floorboard under his feet. None of it reeked of entertainment or frivolity; instead, a shiver inched down his spine, and he leaned back against the door to shut it.

With her back still to him, and her arms crossed over her chest, Mikasa Ackerman spoke. “Go on, then. Ask your questions.”

He stared, eyes narrowed, with his tongue pressed hard against the roof of his mouth. No point in backing down now. Or ever. “You know of a man named Marco Bodt?”

Mikasa didn’t move; even still, she seemed impenetrable. Commanding at the drop of a hat. “ _Should_ I know of a man named Marco Bodt?”

“I figured you’d be the first to know if someone went missing at your place of business.” His fingers curled tight, and his heart leapt up to his throat, but he continued to speak all the same. “He’s been gone since last night.” He folded his arms to mirror her. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“You some kind of detective or something?” She turned then, head tilted, eyes narrowed to match his.

"You take him?" Jean's hands shook at the thought of Marco's moments in this room, at her mercy. Were they his last? Had he struggled? Pleaded? Been scared? "Huh?" His voice quivered; he couldn't find it in him to dwell on it, not when he was already scrabbling at the outline of his waistcoat pocket. "You have him killed for something?" he asked, finally finding purchase on the knife handle over his pocket. It felt ice-cold in his grip once he jabbed his hand inside. "Or did you kill him yourself?" 

His breath shook with every pass, maybe more than the knife did once he tugged it out, but he caught the glint of it out of the corner of his eye all the same. He'd had plenty of experience skinning and gutting livestock at the Braus butchery—that had to work in his favor somehow. "I'll kill you if you did, you know that? I—I swear, I'll kill you—"

Mikasa's face seemed to harden with every word he spoke, until her lips were a thin, dangerous red line against the rest of her pale skin. "You won't take two steps, boy," she said, coming to lean back against the tabletop, fingers curled around the rim. Her voice seemed to sink into his bones, even from a few feet away, but he only tightened his grip on the knife. "You'd be smarter not to."

That was it. Sidestepping the truth was a way of telling it, wasn't it? Without another word, he took a step forward.

Before he could take the second step, Mikasa leapt forward and slammed him back against the door, her forearm pressed hard against his chest and her fingers coiled tightly around his wrist. All he had to do was swallow to just barely feel the hilt of her own knife kiss the hollow of his throat. He didn't need to look right to see the blade, didn't dare to with her face so close to his, like every fiber of her was made of threats and challenges. "What did I tell you?" she hissed thought those straight teeth of hers. "You try to kill me, I'll kill you first, boy, and I'll take all the steps I want. We can do this the easy way—you ask your questions and never come into _my_ place of business again—or the hard way." She swallowed, with as much determination as Jean had fear, even if he never let on."Your pick."

In the moment, Jean remembered where he'd heard her last name before. Ackerman. There was a whole family of them here, like they ran the town. Like they were royalty. Marco had never ventured to write about them before, but maybe he didn't need to write about the well-known. Could he have even gotten his foot in the door? Had he known they—one of them—was here when he came? "Some people say you can feel them everywhere," Marco had said once in the comfort of his living room. "Like crossing them is worse than a sinner crossing God. Like you might as well live the rest of your life with a gun to your head or a knife to your throat."

Jean had never felt them anywhere before, but he felt them now, every person beyond Mikasa, with too many thoughts to pin one down for long. 

His wrist was starting to ache, and the butt of her knife felt at once rough and dull against his throat. One swift movement was all it would take, and she seemed to know it as well as he did. Seemed to revel in her own confidence, even, or maybe the prospect of death was just shading his vision. He took a shallow breath—still looking her in the eye—and slackened his grip. His knife fell to the floor with a clatter.

Almost instantly, Mikasa stepped back and tucked hers into the inner pocket of her suit jacket. "That's that, then," she said, returning to her lean against her desk. "What is it you want?"

Shaking, Jean bent down to stuff the knife away. "You—you really were going to kill me, weren't you?"

Mikasa crossed her arms over her chest. "Anyone would, out of self-defense"—and then, with a cock of her eyebrow—"Seems you were prepared to kill in defense of someone else, hm?" With that, she began to pace in fan of her desk, each step as deliberate as the last, and she seemed to speak more to herself than to him. "Of course, it would have been a terrible mess to clean up. And to think I would have done it with that knife, too." She scoffed. "To think you'd even be worthy of it."

With a scuff of her heel, she stopped and turned to look at Jean, still pressed hard against the door with half-curled fists. "Why?" he ventured to ask, cursing his voice for cracking. "Because a gun would have made too much noise over all the music and drunk folks?"

Mikasa managed a smile, somewhere in between menacing and the sweet disposition she'd taken on before. "Seems you're smarter than I thought. Not to mention..." She tapped her pocket twice; Jean shuddered to think that she might have known his thoughts all along, that she really had the presence Marco had mentioned. "This little thing is only for _personal_ matters, you see. Not that that's any of your concern." Her gaze didn't falter. "Talk, boy. About this Marco gentleman. Didn't your mother ever tell you to use your words?"

"My name is _Jean_ ," he muttered, and then, "Listen. He went missing here, last night. He's... a friend of mine."

With the slightest tilt of her head and lift of her eyebrow, Jean could tell that Mikasa could read through the lines, and she rounded her desk and leaned forward upon it, still deliberate, still knowing. "A friend of yours, you say. Well, I've got to tell you, I know every person who walks in and out of here and takes my drinks, and I haven't seen anybody named Marco around here, ever."

It was then that she sank back into her desk chair and rested her chin on laced on fingers, her eyes still on his, and he thought that for a brief moment he could see some kind of understanding flash across her face. What that understanding was, he couldn't quite place, but a part of him thought that maybe he should have. "But I could help you."

Jean's blood grew cold; he hoped she couldn't feel that, too. "Help me how, exactly?"

Mikasa leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. "You see, owning a business like this, you come to know a lot of people. You could call them family, you could call them acquaintances..." Her lips twitched with another smile. "You could call them assets. You do them enough favors, soon enough they start doing the same for you."

"What are you saying?" Jean asked, squinting.

"I'm saying," she went on, "that I could have my family form a little search party for you. We find your friend, send you two on your merry way. You keep to your business, I'll keep to mine."

"What's the catch?"

Mikasa's smile grew. "It'll cost you, of course. This is a business, after all. Need I remind you," she added, rubbing her nails against the lapel of her jacket, "that this might be the alternative to turning you in for attempted murder?"

Jean drew his shoulders back—considered the possibilities of going it without the polic, of having the business on his side (or at least, of being on theirs)—and let out a slow, silent breath. He asked, voice low and limbs tight, "What's your price?"

"Thirty dollars, to be paid for every month we search."

Jean paled. Thirty dollars a month. He could barely afford that. Their _family_ could barely afford that on top of all the other costs. "Fifteen," he muttered, a weak attempt at haggling.

Mikasa quirked her lips. "I thought you'd do anything for this friend of yours. If you'd do so much as kill, then paying should be a cinch." When no part of Jean wavered, she sighed. "Twenty-five, then."

"Twenty."

A single nod. "Twenty. And a two-dollar down payment, for the trouble." She nodded toward Jean's waistcoat, and the knife suddenly felt heavy against his torso. Jean's shoulders sank before he fished the money out of his pocket.

Mikasa extended a hand, and smiled, red lips, straight teeth, when Jean shook it and left two crumpled bills in her palm. "Attaboy."

\---

The nerve of that boy. Barging in and accusing her of a crime without even letting her reputation precede her. And then having the gall to try and bargain with her. He'd evidently not known who he was dealing with, or quite how to deal with them.

Which was exactly why she could make a few dollars off the poor sap, talk him into thinking a sum as hefty as twenty dollars was his own frenzied idea, and lay her head down to sleep that night. She could do it to anyone, really. Anyone desperate enough for protection, security, that returning sense of familiarity and relief with the things and the people they held dear. It was the nature of business, after all. And the nature of the Family, to boot. What kind of boss would she be if she didn't try to cover herself, her assets, the people around her? She'd already sworn, just a few years before, to uphold anything and everything that the Family stood for; anyone who wanted to step in the way of that would have to pry her duties from her cold, dead hands.

She'd called him a boy when he could probably match her twenty-six years—the way he gripped a pen and signed the papers she'd written up could attest to that enough—and when he turned on his heel and pushed the door open, she could see the stone-hard expression of Levi's face just outside. The sap excused himself, planted his cheap hat upon his head, and whether he partook of her drink or her music or left immediately after that, she didn't know.

Levi watched him go out of the corner of his eye, ran a hand through cropped dark hair, and leaned against the door to shut it as he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. "Plastered, almost all of them," he said under his breath, and wrinkled his nose. 

"I hope you aren't talking about our ensemble," Mikasa replied, tucking her hair back and idly flicking at her earring. "That wouldn't make for good music, especially after we've done our set. And an amazing job we did, too." 

"Even more so if we had an audience with standards," Levi muttered, and Mikasa shot him a look. He shot her one just as hard; if she ever needed a reason to have picked him as a right hand, that look would be it. Or, at the very least, it would be second to kinship and roots in childhood. "Of all businesses to run, it had to be a speakeasy? Couldn't have been construction unions or something?"

Mikasa was still rubbing the dollar bills between thumbs and forefingers, as if checking their worth, their validity. Not that this Kirschtein person was necessarily stupid—or clever—enough to slip her fake money. No one was necessarily that stupid; anyone clever enough never lived free to gloat about their cleverness, anyway. "You'll have to take that up with Uncle Kenny, and everyone who came before him." She snorted. "And Miss Reiss, too. You'd be encroaching on her family's work, if that's what you really want to do. But it's all money in the end, isn't it? Keeps us going. Keeps the business going."

If Levi's expression could go more sour, it did then. "You sound just like him, you know," he countered, taking slow, heavy steps toward the leather armchair leaning against the wall. "'It doesn't matter where the money comes from, as long as it's yours at the end of the day.'"

"All the more reason for him to have passed the Family onto me, then, isn't it?"

"Not like he could have passed it onto me anyway." Levi crossed his legs and fished a lighter and cigarette holder out of his pocket. "You know that as well as I do."

Mikasa frowned. "And _you_ know as well as _I_ do that I don't like anyone stinking up my office with smoke. Not even my consigliere." She opened a desk drawer and tossed him a half-full cigarette box; Levi caught it with one hand, all roughness and knuckles as he tucked it away. "Do it outside if you really need to, Levi. And don't stain my piano keys with the stuff, either. They're white ivory, not yellow."

"Nobody keeps that piano cleaner than I do," Levi shot back. And then, as he turned and rested his hand on the doorknob, "Care to tell me who that was, anyway?"

A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Mikasa's lips, and she rubbed the dollar bills again before sliding them into another drawer. "My next sucker."

\---

Miss Mikasa Ackerman went to bed two dollars and a set of jazz and cabaret songs richer. If Jean had gone to bed that night, he would've gone two dollars and countless investments short.

He returned to the still-empty apartment and fumbled in the dark, gritting his teeth when he stubbed his toe just before finding the living room lamp. He read—books, wayward issues of _The Advocate_ he knew he'd picked up before, either here or at home. He paced the living room in his socks, still in the clothes he wore out. He rolled up his sleeves and washed the knife of fingerprints and as much retrospective guilt as he could manage before tucking it away with all the others. Maybe he wouldn't be able to pick it out among all the others if he mixed them all up. Maybe, if he scrubbed his hands as raw as he could, that would make the back room harder to recall, harder for anyone else to find out.

These were the kinds of things people wrote about, weren't they? In newspapers or in novels. The clinical, he-did-this-and-then-he-did-that that reporters somehow added an incomprehensibly sensational flourish to, while still sticking—at least loosely—to fact. The places, people, events that came The sentences that pulled people out of their chairs, out of their shoes, and into some temporary sequence of their own conjuring, as they tried to imagine the thrill behind it, the motives, the washing away. Or, above all else, who in their right mind would consider anything like it, or attempts at it.

Like they derived some disgusting pleasure from watching the crimes without having to be directly involved with them. Was that what journalism was about?

His stomach turned, and he decided to call his mother again.

"Jean." How his mother could sound so warm and so concerned at the same time, he didn't know. It was enough to stop his pacing and let him sink onto the couch—maybe he'd feel better sleeping on it tonight, instead of in the bed. It felt a little too big for him now. "You had me worried earlier, you know. Are you coming home soon?" He could practically hear her smiling into the phone then; she was always good at making her emotions heard as well as seen. "You know we could always use your hands here."

He blew air through his nose and hoped his mother interpreted it as the laugh it was meant to be. "Aren't I just an extra mouth to feed, too?"

"That's what mothers sign up for. And you earn your own besides." She was good at teasing, too. The endearing kind that used to make him roll his eyes, that he was almost ashamed to admit he longed for now, from a distance, because maybe he should have wanted it before. "Tell me about the city, _motek._ You were in such a rush earlier, you sounded like you were halfway out the door. Has it changed much?"

He couldn't help but smile a little at how easily she could slip her own language in without dragging the rest of her sentence down. Whenever he tried to speak Hebrew, it never sounded quite right. Like it was obvious he'd learned English first, or at least at the same time as Hebrew. Whenever he asked about it in the past, why his parents had taught him to speak like that, his mother only smiled, tucked away her mending or gripped her ladle a little tighter, and said, "So you can get on here better than we did."

He didn't understand why she always wanted to hear about the city, why she asked about it every time he came. He almost thought that things couldn't change that much every few weeks, but they'd certainly turned on their head today, hadn't they? 

Pulling his legs up onto the couch and crossing his legs, he told her about the Christian Science Center, the plaza where he'd eaten lunch, the West End. She would know better than he did if anything had changed at all. If it had, she didn't give any indication of it. He could practically imagine her cradling the earpiece in her old, leathery hands, nodding silently and waiting her turn to speak.

He didn't tell her about the speakeasy. Or about Marco. Or about Mikasa Ackerman. Or about how empty the apartment felt.

Instead, he said, "I'll be home tomorrow, mama. Tell Sasha and Connie for me if you see them, would you?" They'd probably want to pick him up from the bus depot anyway, chattering all the while about what had happened while he was gone as they walked on either side of him. Sasha would link arms with him, and Connie would tousle his hair, and they'd head home like that. It was almost routine. Almost.

He could sense his mother give the phone a patient smile. "Okay, _motek,_ " she said. "I'll see you soon, then." She paused, as if wondering whether she should speak again, and then added, "I love you."

For a frozen moment, Jean wished that was the last thing he'd said to Marco. "Love you more, mama," he mumbled before he hung up.

He packed his things silently, changed into something that didn't stink of city and jazz and illegality, and made himself scavenge the refrigerator once the first rays of sunlight bled through the windows. He shuddered every time he opened the draw of silverware and caught sight of the knives. Like he could still feel the weight of it in his pocket—even in his new change of clothes.

His bus left at 9:00; he arrived at the depot at 8:45 with nothing better to do, reassuring himself that he'd sleep during the ride home.

He didn't sleep. He saw red smiles behind his eyes, and the echo of _attaboy_ chilled him to his bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also post this on my [Tumblr](http://omnistruck.tumblr.com) if you want to reblog!
> 
> Huge huge huge thanks to Selena, Bel, Yves, and Zoë for encouraging me through this chapter. You rock <3!

**Author's Note:**

> I also post this on my [Tumblr](http://omnistruck.tumblr.com) if you want to reblog!
> 
> Huge huge huge thanks to Selena, Bel, Emery, and Zoë for low-key and not-so-low-key pushing me through this. You guys are awesome <3
> 
> Please let me know if you like it! I really like hearing from people and I always appreciate kudos and comments ;u;


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